Category Archives: Pennsylvania Superdelegates

Well, team, tomorrow is primary day in Pennsylvania. As you may have noticed, some of my projects here did not quite ripen. Work, fishing, and volunteering for Admiral Steve Kantrowitz, who is running for PA Senate 19, have intervened.

There’s nothing in this post for voters in the Dem. primary. Your vote matters, and if you’ve been paying attention there’s not much I can tell you about each candidate. I could tell you about what PA’s superdelegates are doing, but that shouldn’t be part of your equation.

As for those casting a meaningless PA presidential primary ballot, my recommendation is this: Remember, top of the ballot is legally meaningless, and the state GOP likes it that way. Down the ballot you will vote for delegates to the convention, who will cast a vote for your district in St. Paul.

If you live in my district, vote for Jim McHale. If you have the opportunity to vote for additional people, leave it blank. Generally, avoid most of the people pledged to Ron Paul, although God bless them for running and absolutely vote for them if you dig Dr. Paul. If you don’t, though, go to this page, also look at the GOP sample ballot you can get at your polling place, and vote for a person who is not endorsed by the party, and is not a Ron Paul supporter.

In my research I have determined it is those people who are most likely to have your district’s best interests at heart. As a group, the greatest fault of those people is they are running mostly because they think it would be fun to be a delegate at the convention. That’s their greatest fault. How we could go wrong with a delegation like that, I don’t know. Pass the bottle, and move to close!

The take away point from all this is what? That when it comes to electing the president of the United States, Republicans have to do lots of research and attempt to guess who might best reflect their values by proxy. If you wanted to design a system concentrating power and influence in the hands of people with roles the public doesn’t understand, this is it.

The page on this site tracking PA’s superdelegates has some updates informed by Josh’s ruminatin’ here. No new commitments, just noting a few leans.

Josh’s post is especially amusing, as he feigns confusion over Sen. Casey’s tentativeness is supporting a candidate. What? Casey is unable to boldly articulate an opinion on something? Why, that’s as rare as the Phillies having a mediocre April!

Here’s a piece in the Post [ht Rich Lowry in The Corner] suggesting that the main criterion for the remaining uncommitted democratic superdelegates will be electability. One can debate which democratic candidate is more electable, but implicit in that assumption is that a marginal lead among pledged delegates will not account for much.

A couple of Pennsylvania’s remaining uncommitted superdelegates include Democrat party-liner Mike Doyle, and Senator Bob Casey. The former was harassed on Super Bowl Sunday by a call from Bill Clinton, showing the GOP is not alone in being out of touch with the priorities if the average American.

Bob Casey shows his characteristic inability to lead anyone, or say anything of substance, when he says “When you have that much at stake and you have two historic figures, it’s going to be difficult to unify the party, and I think we’re going to need people in the middle who can bring people together.”

As Oregon Secretary of State and superdelegate Bill Bradbury said in that piece , “I just believe that the determining factor for superdelegates shouldn’t be, ‘Well, 49 percent voted for Hillary and 51 percent voted for Obama, and that decides it for us.’ Sorry, but that’s not how it works.”

Or, how Sen. Bingaman of New Mexico put it: “If superdelegates were just intended to automatically vote for the preference someone else expressed, there wouldn’t be any purpose…”

So, here we have the leaders of the Democrat party being rather insouciant about the will of actual democrats. Of course, they could also argue that will is impossible to divine, as many of Obama’s pledged delegates are from caucuses rather than primaries. A process like this makes elections in Pakistan, Russia, and Guatemala seem bursting with rectitude by comparison.

Mike Doyle from Pennsylvania channeled the spirit of this blog: “You’re going to see a lot of delegates remaining uncommitted…There’s a sense that this is going to Denver not resolved.”

According to this story at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, this retired VP of the United Steelworkers of America is not only supporting Obama, but will also lobby his former union to endorse him as well. Lynch– and his union– were supporters of John Edwards. My PA tabulation here has been updated accordingly.

While this is bad anecdotal news for Ms. Clinton, it could be worse, as Mr. Lynch happens to be a black guy. So while Mr. Lynch is a union man, he may not be part of a distressing trend for her campaign. Obama’s recent winning streak has at least partly been due to the fact that white, male democrats have been breaking his way. If that trend continues here in the Commonwealth, she’s cooked.

There’s been some PA Democratic super-delegate shuffling, with Hillary adding a couple, losing one to undecided, and Obama adding one. In the end, though, Ms. Clinton still dominates the field 13 to 3. As always, this is the page with the running count for both the Democratic superdelegates, and the GOP delegation candidates.

The one Obama added was, according to the Inky, Philadelphia Councilwoman and DNC member Carole Ann Campbell. Here she is with Bill in happier times for the Clintons:

She chatted with Michelle Obama for about 90 minutes, and apparently agreed that nothing much has happened in America over the last twenty years inspiring pride of country. At least of this country.

Congressman Patrick Murphy was one of the first Congresscritters outside of the state of Illinois to endorse Barack Obama. His congresscritter status also makes him a democrat super-delegate.

Pimping his new book this morning on Michael Smerconish’s radio program, the subject of his superdelegate vote arose. [Aside: Is this use of pimping offensive to the book or Rep. Murphy?] Pennsylvania, you may recall, generally delivers polls with Clinton well ahead of Obama.

He said if his constituents in Bucks County voted for Clinton, he would still cast his superdelegate vote for Obama. Reflecting the will of the voters is what “delegates are for.” This is a defensible position, as long as the Dems have the silly anti-democratic system they have.

What is less defensible is when he elaborated that he agreed the super-delegate system was silly, and wished his party had a system more representative of the will of the party’s voters.

So what he’s saying is he can identify the right thing, but the state and his party really ought to craft rules compelling him to do the right thing. In absence of that compulsion, he’s just going to do what’s good for Patrick Murphy.

One is reminded of St. Augustine: “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

I know Murphy is something of a rising wunderkind in the Democrat party, but the voters of Bucks County should keep this in mind when casting votes in November. After all, as his ambitions become larger what other interests of his constituents will he cast aside?